


A Note of the Old World

by sevensyllables



Series: It Wouldn't Be Make Believe If You Believed In Me [5]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Established Relationship, Fallout Kink Meme, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-07
Updated: 2015-11-07
Packaged: 2018-04-30 11:21:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5161952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevensyllables/pseuds/sevensyllables
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arcade catches the Courier in a quiet moment, sewing up his worn satchel. It was his mother’s mailbag; she was a courier before him, and thanks to Benny and Goodsprings he can hardly remember her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Note of the Old World

Every time Arcade passed Emily Ortal on the way in or out of the Lucky 38 she shot him a dirty look. The Courier _had_ tried to place a bug on the mainframe, he hedged, it had just been rendered inert by the tower’s internal security almost instantaneously. Computers weren’t his specialty, he would reiterate, as she remained unimpressed and frowning. But, the fact that Emily clearly believed Arcade could work a little harder to secure Mr. House’s medical knowledge for Followers’ purposes hadn’t prevented her from continuing to affably recommend him various books from the Mormon Fort’s communal shelf.

The dense hardcover he had in hand was her most recent recommendation; _The Octopus_ the faded spine read, gold print partially flecked off by time. Presumably extinct Old World sea life did not actually feature in it, and the title was merely a metaphor, as Emily had said the novel concerned the dealings of the railroad companies of Pre-War California, but that remained to be seen.

He wandered in the direction of the Lucky 38’s rec room, knowing he wouldn’t be able to concentrate in the guest bedroom where Lily was currently schooling an eager Veronica and an amused Cass on the finer points of knitting. He crossed the threshold of the rec room, pleased to see that the armchairs in the corner were unoccupied—only to discover Boone was currently using the pool table to field strip his rifle, humming tunelessly as he worked. Arcade briefly considered whether that was more or less terrifying than if he were working silently and decided on less; when they were out trudging in the relentless Mojave sun, Boone always liked to hum along to the Courier’s radio even though he was tone deaf.

Arcade took two steps back, debating silently.

“Shit!” the Courier swore loudly from the kitchen, and Arcade decided on the devil he didn’t know rather than the one before him.

The reason Boone was currently using the pool table for weapons maintenance became instantly apparent: the long kitchen table was covered in what could only be generously termed ‘crap.’ More components and spare bits of twisted metal than Arcade had seen in Old Lady Gibson’s scrapyard littered the table from end to end, interspersed with a sea of bullet casings and shells, a comical assortment of stolen keys, and enough bobby pins to outfit a small army of show girls. The rough murmur of Mr. New Vegas’ voice filled the room from where the Courier’s Pip-Boy lay abandoned on the table atop what looked to be several issues of _Lad’s Life_ and _Salesman Weekly_. The Courier himself was seated at the far corner of the room at an island of clear tablespace beyond the sea of Wasteland junk, hunched under a lamp that he must have pilfered from a bedroom, back to the door.

Arcade took a half step into the kitchen to see around the tense curve of the Courier’s shoulders. A rough sewing kit and his messenger bag lay in front of him.

Of all the times Arcade had seen the Courier working with his hands before, he had never seen him sew. Elbow deep in the auxiliary generator at HELIOS One or performing routine maintenance on ED-E by the side of a cracked and baking highway, sure. But sewing was new, or perhaps simply done away from prying eyes.

If pressed, Arcade could pinpoint the first time he had felt a genuine twinge of attraction for the Courier—more than just a primal response to his dark eyes or his wicked grin—to the second. He and the Courier had wandered down to Mick & Ralph’s in Freeside with Rex, the Courier chattering about his intent to purchase specific rounds, 9mm hollow point and 10mm armor piercing, while Arcade weighed the better points of returning to his mind-numbing research at the Mormon Fort. Mick had stepped out for a couple of minutes, Ralph had told them from behind the counter at the front of the store. He was fiddling with the knob of the radio on the shelf, only getting static for his trouble.

The Courier had the back panel of the radio popped open and its innards laid out on the counter in seconds, blithely explaining the purpose of each part and what had gone wrong while Arcade looked on intently. Ralph had given Arcade a knowing look when the Courier placed the radio back on its high shelf, the sounds of the Ink Spots coming in clearly, and said with a sly wink that he wished his partner was that good with his hands, other than with guns of course.

His assumption had been incorrect—Arcade and the Courier hadn’t been involved at the time, could only recently be considered involved now, although neither of them had sought the beds of strangers for months—but the basis of his assumption had been true. Arcade had barely known the Courier for more than a week at that point, and had understood little of him besides his penchant for teasing and his single-minded determination, but with a few deft twists of his wrist the Courier had set that radio to rights and shown Arcade a potential for depth beyond skill with an automatic weapon and brazen charm.

Yes, Arcade had _watched_ the Courier work with his hands before, but it had never been sewing.

The Courier swore again and Arcade cleared his throat from the doorway. The Courier glanced over his shoulder quickly. “Hi, Doc,” he mumbled, sucking on his finger.

When Arcade merely walked over and raised one skeptical eyebrow, the Courier pulled his index finger from his mouth with a pop and presented it to him. “War wound.” He gestured at the bag in front of him. “Field surgery.”

“Ah,” Arcade said simply, setting his book down next to the slipping stack of magazines and the Pip-Boy before turning the lamp more toward himself. He leaned over the Courier’s shoulder and took his proffered hand. He had, in fact, lanced himself with his sewing needle. Arcade looked up with a smirk. “I think you’ll live.” He gingerly picked up the messenger bag. “Not sure about this patient, though.”

The flap was torn nearly clean through, the part that would lay directly over the mouth of the bag. Its flying envelope insignia was faded, nearly rubbed off, and it proclaimed itself to be property of the ‘AVE EXPRES.’ He turned the flap over in his hands. The Courier must have patched this bag two dozen times, and the canvas was worn so thin in some spots you could catch glimpses of lamplight through the fibers. It looked like it had seen decades of use. “Might be time to call it and bury this soldier out back, bring in a new recruit,” he quipped.

Arcade’s playful smile died when he glanced back down at the Courier. His face was blank. Arcade set the bag back down in front of the Courier carefully, waiting.

The Courier ran a finger along the tear. “It was my mother’s,” he said quietly.

Embarrassment and shame buzzed in Arcade’s ears. The Courier hadn't ever spoken seriously of his family before, rarely spoke of anything from before his time in the Mojave. He reached out one hand to squeeze the Courier’s ‘uninjured’ one and walked around the end of the table to take the seat across from him.

“Let’s see what I can do here,” Arcade said quietly as he pulled the bag closer, pushing his glasses up his nose and holding out a hand for the needle and thread.

He removed the few shaky stitches the Courier had put in before rethreading the needle. He glanced up at the Courier—his face was still serious—before he started in on the repairs. “Your mother was a courier,” Arcade said, not a question, not if the Courier didn’t want it to be. As he started his patch job he caught a vague whiff of mint, the flash of neat blonde hair: sense memories that always accompanied Arcade’s thoughts of his own mother.

“Yep,” the Courier agreed, releasing a slow sigh through his nose. “Out of One Pine, New California, on the 395 just a ways north of Junktown.” The Courier leaned back in his chair and stretched, resting his hands behind his head. “I grew up in that Express Outpost,” the Courier said with a fond but sad grin. “We repurposed the old airport; hangar had plenty of room to store deliveries. The roof leaked, but I can’t remember a lotta rain so it must not have mattered much. Probably still haven’t patched it.”

He picked up a bobby pin, stretched it idly on its hinge, set it back down. “Mentioned it once, but my mom told me my father was NCR, passed through town on patrol one time. Needed to send a package somewhere east, ran into my mom.” The Courier’s accompanying shrug said ‘and that was that.’ “How’s your book?” he gestured at it with his elbow.

“Wouldn’t know,” Arcade said evenly, readjusting the table lamp. “Haven’t started it yet.”

The Courier picked it up, ran his fingers over the faded gold embossing of interconnected blades of wheat on the cover. “ _The Octopus_ ,” he read off the cracked spine. “What’s it about?”

“The California railroad system in the pre-Republic days. The Pre-War days, actually. Early 20th century, I believe Emily said? It’s a novel,” Arcade said, grinning at the Courier’s raised eyebrows. “Recounting the suffering of the common worker in the face of the giant corporation. I’m assuming the title is a metaphor.”

The Courier tapped at the cover with his thumb. “That sounds…”

“Boring?” Arcade supplied.

“I was going to say that sounds like you,” the Courier said with a teasing smile. “But you know your personality best, Doc.”

Arcade gestured at the book with both hands, still holding the bag and the needle. “It’s set in what was the San Joaquin Valley, likely in between where Junktown and Necropolis are located today.” The Courier was probably more familiar with the area than Arcade was, given where he grew up. “I didn’t know you were from New California.”

The Courier shrugged quickly, a hint of a frown on his face. “Y’never asked.” He leaned forward, propping his elbows on the table. “What about you?”

“What about me?” Arcade deflected, turning his face several more degrees downward, ostensibly to observe his own progress with stitching, but in reality to avoid the Courier’s curious gaze.

The Courier wasn’t fooled. “Where are you from?”

This time Arcade shrugged, fighting that tongue-tied feeling that always threatened to overwhelm him when someone—anyone—attempted to dig into his past. He cleared his throat and resumed stitching evenly. “New California, as well. Up further north, though.”

The Courier watched him work quietly for several long moments, fixated on the push of needle through fabric, the beginning lilting notes of ‘Blue Moon’ the only thing in between them. “You perform a lot of surgeries, Doc?”

Arcade shrugged again. “I’ve done a few in my time. Thankfully not often, though. Mostly just as a part of my medical training at the Boneyard.” His throat clicked at offering up that autobiographical detail, no matter how minor. It wasn’t as if the Courier didn’t already know he’d been trained in medicine by the Followers; he’d told him that himself when they’d first met.

The Courier picked up a round from the pile of junk and spun it on the table in a neat circle. Arcade couldn’t identify the caliber, but watched as the Courier picked it up again, rattling and spinning, rattling and spinning. “My mom had to have surgery once,” he finally said. “Nothing could ever get to her, but I still wanted to be there to hold her hand before an’ after.” The Courier frowned down at the round in his hands and Arcade looked away.

“Was it a Followers doctor who performed it?” he asked. He frowned, focusing on the bag in his hands, trying to chase the threads of this conversation, stomach knotting at the thought of where the Courier might expect it to go. The ever-present hum of the radio recalled warm afternoons where his mother would sing to hide the wince she made at every other step. “I assume we have a presence there if it’s that close to Junktown, but I’m not personally familiar with the area.”

Arcade held the bag closer to the light, still not trusting himself to face him head on, but the Courier didn’t respond. He didn’t know how this question would be the one to give the Courier this much pause—it wasn’t as if he had asked after his mother’s condition, thoughts of success rates and life expectancies flitting through his head—but then again Arcade himself got twitchy anytime someone mentioned energy weapons, so he could hardly judge. He glanced upward and nearly pricked himself with the needle. The Courier was bent double, head in his hands, visibly thinking. “What is it?” Arcade asked.

The Courier didn’t respond. Arcade set down the needle and the bag, made an aborted move to reach out to him. “Late night with Cass and Raul?” he hazarded, trying and failing to keep his tone light.

The Courier gave a hollow chuckle, rubbing roughly at his face. “No, Doc.” He leaned back, tensed his hands on his thighs as though he might stand up and flee the room. He sighed, eventually, when Arcade leaned forward, concern clear on his face. “I can’t always remember everything since I became ‘Courier Number Six.’”

The bottom dropped out of Arcade’s stomach. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I can remember some things from before I got to Goodsprings, places and faces mostly, but then sometimes after…I’ll just forget whole conversations,” the Courier leaned forward against the table again, left hand rubbing at the scar at his temple. “Or people.”

“What?” Arcade repeated.

The Courier shrugged, ran a hand through his hair quickly.

“You mean you can’t remember everything that has happened _since_ Goodsprings?” Arcade clarified. The Courier shrugged again. “Are you talking days here?”

The Courier jerked a thumb toward his Pip-Boy, the display off but the wailing notes of Peggy Lee filtering through. “Why do you think I write everything down?”

Arcade’s eyes flickered between the Courier and his Pip-Boy, brow furrowed. “Because you traipse around the Mojave trying to lend a hand to every person you meet?”

The Courier laughed, but it was joyless. “Well, yeah,” he allowed. “But also ‘cause if I didn’t there’d be no guarantee I would even know it had happened.”

Arcade shook his head, frowned. Of all of them—Boone, Cass, Raul, Veronica, Lily, even Arcade himself—the Courier had seemed the one who best knew where he was going and what he wanted out in the Wasteland. He’d been a man with a mission from day one; Arcade didn’t know how to reconcile that imposing figure with this reality. “And this is something that you’re still experiencing,” he prompted.

The Courier sighed heavily, ruefully. “Yeah, Doc.”

“I’m sorry,” Arcade said, raising his hands. “I’m just having a little difficulty processing this.”

The Courier snorted. “Well then that makes two of us.”

Arcade grimaced, reached over the table toward the Courier, but he leaned back and shook his head. “No, I’m sorry,” he said, scratching his fingers through his hair. “That wasn’t fair. It’s not like I’ve been goin’ around announcing this,” he gestured toward his scarred temple. “I guess that you didn’t know just means I’d gotten pretty good at hiding it.”

“What happened?” Arcade asked quietly, stretching one hand over the center of the table, palm down.

The Courier’s mouth twisted uncomfortably and he sighed, but he reached out a hand as well, knocked his knuckles against Arcade’s absently.

“I still can’t even remember getting shot,” he began softly. Arcade had to lean in and strain to hear him over the Pip-Boy’s radio, briefly considered turning it off for once. “Hell, at the time I could hardly even remember Benny at all ‘sides a whiff of cigarettes and that ugly fucking suit.” He paused, glanced up at Arcade. “Did you ever meet him, see him anywhere in Vegas?”

“I never had the pleasure, no,” Arcade said. “I don’t think he often deigned to enter Freeside.”

“Well you weren’t missing out.” The Courier licked his lips, sighed again. He stood quickly and stalked over to the fridge; Arcade was honestly surprised when he pulled out two bottles of purified water rather than the few bottles of whiskey Cass had left there, one stash among many. “I came to in Doc Mitchell’s place and I didn’t even know it had happened. My head hurt plenty, but I didn’t know why, or that over a week had passed. I still thought I had the Chip on me, and told Mitchell I needed to get to the north gate of the Strip.”

He shook his head, uncapped one bottle and took a sip. “He wouldn’t let me go, had to explain to me half a hundred times I’d been shot, buried, and dug up again.” He rubbed at his forehead for a second before his eyes widened, as if he realized what he was doing—a tell. He walked over and sat back down across from Arcade, sliding the second bottle of water to him across the table. “But then the Powder Gangers rolled into Goodsprings and push came to shove.” The Courier shrugged. “Mitchell figured that if I could survive a good old-fashioned shootout in the middle of town he probably couldn’t keep me there.”

“And so you just made your way from Goodsprings to New Vegas,” Arcade said slowly, picking at the faded label of his bottle. “By yourself.” He pointed at the Courier’s Pip-Boy. “With only that to remind you of where you were going. While actively experiencing the effects of severe post-traumatic amnesia.”

The Courier threw one hand up in the air. “No one’s ever said I wasn’t stupid, Doc.” He shook his head and took another swig of water, setting the bottle down roughly, a scatter of drops landing on the forgotten mailbag. “But you’re wrong; I never forgot where I was going, only some of the things that kept me from gettin’ there.”

He glanced away from Arcade, eyes lighting first on his Pip-Boy, then on any number of assorted scraps and gadgets on the kitchen table. “Remember when you, me, Veronica, and Boone first got to the Strip and you stopped me outside of Tops and asked me what I was here to do?”

“Of course,” Arcade said quickly; he couldn’t forget. He had taken up with the Courier because he’d heard good things about him from Julie, the other Followers, word already spreading of his compassion even though the man had only just arrived in Freeside. Arcade had signed on to help the Courier help the downtrodden of the Wasteland, only to discover that the Courier’s first act with Arcade as a companion would be his single-minded pursuit of vengeance against Benny.

Arcade had argued with him, demanded to know what was going on—looking to Veronica and Boone, equally strangers to him and each other, for support. Arcade had nearly walked away then, hearing the Courier’s sparse and faltered answers as weak justifications for casual murder rather than the hazy recollections they clearly must have been.

The Courier picked at the undersides of his fingernails with a spare needle. “It’s gonna sound stupid, Doc, but I chased down Benny to get that Chip hoping I would get my memories back when I found him. Like something from a fuckin’ fairytale.” He shrugged and tossed the needle to the table. “I can’t even remember killing him. Hell, I don’t know how I got him up to his room. All I know is I put two shots in _his_ head with his own gun.” His eyes flicked to Maria, the 9mm never far away, sitting amongst the junk on the table. He sighed, ran his hands through his hair. “Didn’t help, obviously, but I don’t think it’s getting any worse.”

“But you’re not saying it’s improving.”

“No, not really,” the Courier admitted. “But at least now I remember that I can’t always remember. _That’s_ an improvement on when I first came to. God, that was…” He shook his head, cutting off that thought, and tapped at the screen of his Pip-Boy. “But I can make do.”

“Does anyone else know besides Doc Mitchell?” Arcade asked. He wasn’t sure if he would prefer the answer to be yes or no.

The Courier smiled guiltily and nodded. “Yeah, but not until recently,” he admitted. “A couple weeks ago me and Veronica were headed down the 95 toward Novac and we stopped at the Grub n’ Gulp on the way outta Vegas.” He grimaced, rolling the cap to his water between his fingers. “She heard me have what must’ve been three-quarters of the same conversation I’d had with Lupe and Fitz on the way _into_ New Vegas the first time. She gave me a weird look, but neither of them said anything about it, so I figured I had just said something dumb and we kept on. It wasn’t ‘til we made camp that night that she asked if I was alright.” The Courier snorted, “I can’t believe that’s the only time one of you has noticed. Damn sure it wasn’t the first time I’ve repeated myself like that.”

Arcade didn’t say anything, but he smiled into his water as he thought back to how earlier in the week Veronica had socked Boone in the stomach a little harder than playfulness dictated, all because he wouldn’t stop cracking jokes about the Courier forgetting where he’d stored his caravan shotgun.

“Raul gives me looks sometimes like he’s trying to puzzle me out,” the Courier continued, spinning the plastic cap on the table now. “But Boone and Cass play their cards pretty close to the vest on those kinda things, so I’m not sure.” He paused, picked the cap up and juggled it through his fingers. He laughed and looked back up at Arcade. “And you’re goin’ to think this sounds nuts, Doc, but I’ve actually talked to Lily about this a lot.”

“Lily?” Arcade repeated skeptically. He tried to picture the kindly nightkin—harmless until she wasn’t—holding a conversation with that kind of depth and nuance. He spared a thought that her knitting lesson with Veronica and Cass must be going well—none of them had barged into the kitchen to interrupt their discussion yet, as Cass was so prone to doing.

“Yeah,” the Courier said, hunching his shoulders in defensively. “I know you guys don’t like to give her a lot of credit, but Lily actually knows a lot about this kind of thing. She’s lived pretty much like this a long time.” He shrugged, quickly, self-consciously. “She understands what it’s like not knowing what you _should_ know, not knowing what’s real.”

Arcade frowned and leaned forward on his elbows, narrowly missed stabbing himself with an abandoned needle on the table. “Wait a minute, are you having delusions?” Arcade winced internally as the Courier’s mouth tightened; he had asked him the same question before, much more flippantly, back in Vault 22 without understanding the implications.

“No, Doc, I’m not,” the Courier said, but his mouth was twisted in an unconvincing frown. He sighed again, letting his head droop for a moment before he rubbed at his thighs and looked Arcade in the eye. “You know Victor?” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, gesturing vaguely where the Securitron was standing guard outside the elevator on the other side of the kitchen wall.

Arcade raised one eyebrow. “You mean the robot who thinks he’s in an old Western holotape and doesn’t talk to any of us but you? Of course I know Victor.”

The Courier let out another long breath, rubbing his hands over his face. He tapped two fingers on the table and said, “When I walked into Novac for the first time, Victor was there waiting for me. He showed up at Boulder City, too, like he’d always been there. I asked him the same questions I had for him in Goodsprings, asked him what he was doing so far out, and he either dodged the question or told me _he_ couldn’t remember the answer.” He rested his head on the heel of his hand. “It was like looking in a fuckin’ foggy robot mirror, cowboy hat and everything. With him popping up over again like that, and me not remembering exactly how I’d gotten to where I was…I thought I was nuts.”

He looked back up at Arcade. “’Course, that was all due to Mr. House. Didn’t want Victor giving any part of his plans away.” He sighed, glanced down the table again, one leg jiggling up and down. “Probably wasn’t even the same ‘bot.” He gestured back and forth in the air between them. “The ones here on the Strip are all networked together, so the Victor who dug me up is probably still back in Goodsprings right now even as he’s standing guard out in the hall.”

Arcade just nodded slowly and made a grab for one of the Courier’s balled up hands, squeezed it in what he hoped was a comforting gesture. The Courier nodded and gave him a slight smile but his knee didn’t stop bouncing. “What convinced you that you weren’t…‘nuts’?” Arcade asked.

“Honestly?” the Courier said, with a huff of a laugh. He raised his free hand and gestured all around them. “Who’s to say I’m not?”

“Well, me, for one,” Arcade said.

“Yeah, but you follow me around all the time, Doc, so your judgment’s a tad suspect as well.” The Courier was smiling his teasing smile, but his eyes were still a bit lost. Arcade squeezed his hand again, laced their fingers together. Absently, he considered that they had never held each other’s hands like this before.

After a moment the Courier rearranged himself in his chair, sitting on one leg, stilling himself, but he didn’t take his hand away from Arcade’s. He cleared his throat and gestured toward his Pip-Boy and said, “I know having that thing on all the time drives you up the wall, the same songs over again, but I like it. The words ‘n the melodies never change. Easier to remember than places. Names.”

The Courier lingered on that last admission, ducked his head away from Arcade’s frown to take another drink of water, and what seemed like a thousand flashes of curious moments past righted themselves in Arcade’s mind.

‘It’s as good a name as any,’ the Courier had said when Arcade had scoffed at their first introduction. A handshake, a wry grin, and the name ‘Jack;’ it had seemed too on-the-nose, mimicking any number of old Western holos where the mysterious stranger in the cowboy hat came riding into town to set everyone’s problems aright.

And ‘Jack’ was as good a name as any, Arcade supposed, but the Courier never answered to it, prompting Cass and Veronica to dare each other to make up increasingly outrageous stories about the kind-hearted outlaw with the assumed name. The Courier was much more likely to respond to Boone shouting, ‘Hey, dumbass, you’re going the wrong way,’ than to the name he had given them, so they never used it and he didn’t seem to miss it. Arcade wondered if the Courier had any recollection of what his real name might be, but as he took in the tense set of the Courier’s shoulders, the way his fingers tapped against his bottle too quickly, he didn’t feel he now was the time to ask.

But the Courier’s seeming inability to navigate unassisted was another mystery solved. He was constantly checking and rechecking his Pip-Boy, winking and telling them, ‘Don’t let me forget where we’re going.’ Cass had raucously declared this was merely him humoring ‘the merry band of followers,’ making them feel like they had a say in what they did and where they went, and as she tried to put the Courier in a headlock she had said she wouldn’t stand to be so condescended to. But now Arcade understood that this wasn’t a joke or a concession, but a failsafe, a call to his friends to be alert in case his memory or his Pip-Boy failed him.

Arcade looked intently at the Courier’s face as the last strains of ‘Sit and Dream’ played out. He thought back on the moments they’d shared over the last months, searching his own memory for any signs of hesitancy or confusion in the Courier when Arcade had gone in for a touch, a kiss. He squeezed the Courier’s hand and his attention flicked back to Arcade in an instant. “I haven’t ever—” He stopped, adjusted his glasses. “Look, if I’ve ever taken advantage—”

The Courier’s eyebrows shot up so quickly it was nearly comical. “Whoa, whoa, Doc,” he said, raising one hand. “No.” He waited for Arcade’s concerned frown to drop before he continued, “I _always_ remember all of you: Boone, Cass, Veronica, Raul, Lily, even Rex and ED-E.”

The Courier smiled his first genuine smile since this conversation had begun, and Arcade hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it until something in his chest loosened. “I knew it right from when I met each of you. Something about you all just seemed…” the Courier shrugged again, looser, less tense. “Familiar, easy. Like I knew I wouldn’t have trouble remembering you.” He chuckled, bumped his foot against Arcade’s underneath the table. “That’s why I keep you assholes around. It’s not like I go around inviting _every_ stranger I meet to come travel the Wastes with me.”

Arcade kicked him back and nodded, not fully able to return his smile but satisfied at least that the Courier believed he was telling the truth. And it was easy to believe, for all that the Courier would occasionally forget where they were going, he seemed able to recall the slightest bit of information about his companions, whether it was honoring Veronica’s desire to wear a pretty dress or Raul’s latest low-stakes bet. But still, given that his was a memory problem…

“How can you really know though?” Arcade pressed. “Isn’t not remembering something…not remembering something?”

The Courier shrugged, leaned back to look at the ceiling. “It feels different. It’s not like misplacing your house key or walking into a room and being unable to recall why you were there.” He shrugged again. “It’s like…a fog, I guess. You know there’s something in there, but it’s lost, you can’t see it.”

“And have you been to see Doc Mitchell since you left Goodsprings?” Arcade asked. “You certainly haven’t spoken to me about your mental health.”

“That’d be kind of a conflict of interest, don’t you think, Doc?” The Courier ran his thumb over Arcade’s knuckles with a grin. “Before I left, Mitchell put in a map point and a reminder note on this thing,” he gestured at the Pip-Boy, “Told me to see Dr. Usanagi. I remember how to get there at least,” he quipped, but this smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“And what does Dr. Usanagi recommend?”

“Besides avoiding any more blows to the head?” he shrugged. “She says I’m lucky to be up and moving at all. Anything else is just…” he glanced away from Arcade, one leg resumed shaking up and down. “A bonus, I guess. We talk things over, she asks me where I’ve been since I last saw her, what I’ve done, how I feel,” he shrugged again. “It may not be doing me any good but it’s certainly not doing any harm.”

“I think it’s probably doing you more good than you realize.” Arcade brushed at the Courier’s hand with his thumb. The very fact that he was able to talk about this with someone who would understand what he was going through without placing any expectations on his answers or behavior was valuable in and of itself from a therapeutic standpoint. He bit at his lip. “Not that I’m trying to make this conversation about me, but why didn’t you want to tell me about this?”

The Courier’s smile was tired and lopsided. “It’s not that I didn’t _want_ to tell you, Doc. I just didn’t know if I should, if I should tell any of you besides Lily. We’ve got enough to worry about without trying to fix me.”

Arcade flushed slightly, hid it poorly behind his bottle of water; his mind had in fact been straying to texts he knew the Followers possessed on traumatic brain injuries and memory loss, to paying a visit to Dr. Usanagi and hashing out the Courier’s condition with her.

“Besides,” the Courier continued, tracing the skin on the back of Arcade’s hand. “It’s worked out so far, just going around joking and being friendly to everyone like I’ve met ‘em all before, shooting back when shot at.” He sighed, but fixed Arcade with an intent stare, the one his enemies saw right before he brought his rifle to bear. “Mr. House had me dug up for a reason, believed I was the man to make things happen out here in Vegas. The NCR and even the Legion approached me for that same reason. Figured I could just work harder to prove ‘em right. Well, not the Legion,” he amended with a laugh. “They’re right that I can get things done, but nothing else.”

Arcade chuckled too, considering the man before him. It was difficult to believe that the Courier was operating with any sort of handicap to his focus, but perhaps his lapses in memory were what made him all the more determined to do some good for New Vegas. If the people of the Mojave couldn’t forget him—from the ghouls at the REPCONN test site outside of Novac to the miners in Sloan—maybe he wouldn’t have to wonder so much about who he was, whom he was trying to be. Ironic, really, that it was Arcade’s clear recollection of his own history—his knowledge of his parents’—that inspired him to do the same.

“I’m nearly finished here,” Arcade said, picking the bag and the needle back up from the table. The Courier nodded gratefully, a small smile playing on his lips as he sat back to watch Arcade work again. He didn’t seem relaxed, exactly, although he was settling further into his chair, his bottle of water crackling less as he gripped it. But he did seem lighter, perhaps, for having divested himself of the secrets he had carried every day. Arcade pinched at the bridge of his nose, swallowed audibly. He cast around for a way to start this conversation—just beginning to hear his pulse in his ears—when his eyes fell on the novel by the Courier’s elbow. “I didn’t get to ask you exactly, are you familiar with the San Joaquin Valley?” He nodded his chin toward the book.

The Courier picked the novel back up, idly thumbed through its first and last pages. “I think so, if it’s where you said it is.” He looked up and smiled, “I thought it might have a map; I like it when books have maps.”

“I’ve never been in that particular region that I can recall,” Arcade plowed on as if the Courier hadn’t said anything, eyes not leaving his work on the messenger bag. The Courier set the book back down deliberately, folded his hands, listening. “I’ve been to the Boneyard, to learn from the Followers, like I said,” Arcade barely faltered in his stitching, it would only be a few more passes of the needle now. Despite the bottle of water before him, his throat felt dry. “But I was born up north,” he admitted. “In Navarro.”

The Courier frowned, clearly thinking, “I’ve never heard of it.” A self-deprecating laugh, “I haven’t just forgotten. That a town?”

“Of a fashion,” Arcade said simply, tying off his patch job. He held the bag up to the light, tested its tensile strength. It would hold, could manage many more miles with the Courier yet.

Arcade handed the bag over carefully, aware that the Courier was still questioning where their conversation was going, but was obviously willing to let it slide for the moment. The Courier ran fond hands over the repaired messenger bag.

“Thank you,” he said, voice slightly rough with emotion. He traced the patchwork Arcade had set in. “My mom gave this to me the day of my first job for the Express.”

He closed his eyes; now that he knew what to look for, Arcade could see him straining to think, to remember. “She slipped the bag across my shoulders and smiled at me, she looked so proud. She started to say, ‘Now _mijo_ , don’t forget…’ but some customer walked in and interrupted her. I can remember what he wanted—was asking about some shipment of bighorner hides that his business partner was meant to have sent down the Long 15.” He opened his eyes and shook his head with a mirthless laugh. “But I can’t remember what she said next.”

Arcade pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, trying to recall the last conversation he and his mother had shared. It was something innocuous, he believed, a nonsense exchange where they tried to make sense of lyrics in a song, dissolving in laughter, a memory bathed in the sunlight of recollection. Arcade busied himself with winding the thread back up, retrieving needles from where they had strayed on the table.

As that task took only about fifteen seconds, he then squared up the stack of magazines the Courier’s Pip-Boy sat on, gathered a spray of bobby pins, and was reaching for a random assortment of rounds when the Courier placed one of his hands on Arcade’s to still him. “Hey,” he said softly. Arcade eyed him warily, heartbeat drumming out the tune of some patriotic Old World song half-remembered from childhood. “I know this will only slow you down, but d’you maybe want to read this together?” He tapped at the cover of the novel. “Take turns reading it out loud?”

Arcade took several steadying breaths, ignoring the twinge of guilt he felt in his ribs that after the discussion they’d had it was the Courier now trying to calm _him_. “I’d like that,” he admitted, throat tight; that was how his mother had taught him to read years ago and miles away—her one page and him the next, alternating until they dissolved into giggles and their own additions to the story. He took a deep breath, then opened his eyes. “But first…” The Courier’s gaze was unwavering but gentle. “I have a few things I’d like to tell you.”

The Courier nodded slowly, as if trying not to startle a wild animal.

“About who I am,” Arcade continued, twisting the cap back on his bottle of water. “About who my parents were.”

“Okay, sure,” the Courier said evenly. He made to stand up. “Let me just clean all this shit up. Lily’ll kill me if I leave it out.” He pushed in his chair. “Meet you upstairs in the lounge in fifteen? I promise I won’t forget.” A taut smile accompanied the joke; he couldn’t be comfortable making light of his condition yet, but somehow Arcade felt he would get there, nothing had stopped him before now.

“Sure,” Arcade agreed, feeling like he was trying to run in sand rather than standing on sturdy linoleum flooring.

The Courier smiled at him in understanding. He walked around the end of the table to pick up his Pip-Boy and replace it on his arm, dropping a quick kiss to Arcade’s forehead and squeezing his shoulder as he passed by.

Arcade took the novel with him as he left the room, the Courier hustling to return the kitchen and his traveling bag to working order. Arcade eyed Victor silently as he waited for the elevator to take him up to the cocktail lounge. The robot said nothing to him, as usual, just kept staring forward with its fake cowboy smile. When the elevator opened Arcade leaned against its back wall heavily, thumb skimming the spine of _The Octopus_. The insides of the front and back covers were miraculously unstained by time or use, clear off-white pages blank with purpose. Perhaps when they finished their discussion he and the Courier could pen in a map of their own, from One Pine to Navarro, to everything in between.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Frank Norris’ _The Octopus_ , one of my personal favorite novels which I am sure both the Courier and Arcade will love reading.
> 
> Written for [this prompt](http://falloutkinkmeme.livejournal.com/6099.html?thread=14528723#t14528723) on the Fallout Kink Meme.
> 
> Someone please come explain to me how to write something short and fluffy on [tumblr](http://kuznetsovs.tumblr.com/).


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